Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [101]
Tracy wasn’t happy about She Wanted a Millionaire, considered it junk, but as was the case with so many Fox productions, the quality of the filmmakers would far exceed the quality of the material. The supporting cast would include Una Merkel, a fine light comedienne, veteran stage and screen actor James Kirkwood, and Dorothy Peterson, a Broadway contemporary of Tracy’s borrowed from First National. Shooting the film would be John F. Seitz, one of the most experienced and respected of all cinematographers. Directing would be John G. “Jack” Blystone, an old hand at fashioning silk purses from the sows’ ears he was frequently handed by Wurtzel and Sheehan, for whom he had worked since 1920.
Production began on July 6, Tracy making his initial appearance in the film as a rail engineer shuttling coal to the plant where Bennett works. She’s walking home from a bad date, and he gives her a ride. “I remember him as a rather private person,” Bennett later wrote of Tracy, “taciturn, though he had a delicious sense of humor.” No happier with the script than anyone else, Bennett managed to enjoy the process of making the film, if not the film itself. “I liked the director, John Blystone,” she said, “and working with Spencer Tracy was a huge treat.” Once he knew that he was in good company, Tracy opened up a bit, relaxing around his costar and ribbing her as he would one of his colleagues onstage. “He teased me unmercifully, and it always pleased him when I rose to the bait, which was most of the time.”
Blystone, who also hailed from Wisconsin, had a restrained sense of staging, a good eye, and knew how to highlight an actor’s performance. He gave Tracy his head, letting him affect a bit of an accent in his early scenes, remembering all too well the Irish aristocracy aboard the Milwaukee Line. She Wanted a Millionaire was Bennett’s film, on the ascendancy as she was, younger sister to Constance—one of the industry’s top stars—and leading lady to both Ronald Colman and John Barrymore. Tracy, though, had a few flashy moments of his own, none better than when he played a poignant love scene to a simple cape draped over a broom and a chair, dinner for two in his room growing cold, despair settling in as it becomes evident she’s not going to show. He goes to Merkel, Joan’s randy, wisecracking girlfriend, a reporter for the local paper who is typing up a story. Reciting a monologue of grievances, all worked up, he leaves with her to go out and get drunk.
Filming continued at a steady clip until the morning of July 28, 1931. The company was on location in Stone Canyon, a section of Bel Air threaded with bridle paths. Kirkwood, unsteady on his mount, swapped horses with Bennett, who’d been riding since early childhood, and the horse, skittish and unnerved, promptly headed back to the stables. Bennett pulled her around to go back up the hill when the horse saw a camera car racing toward her and shied.
“A tree stopped my flight,” said the actress, “and I ended up in a heap like a discarded rag doll with a hip and three vertebrae broken and a beautiful black eye.” Sensing the worst, Jack Blystone gave orders that she not be moved, and Bennett arrived at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital with one leg pushed up two inches shorter than the other. An orthopedic surgeon set her hip the next morning, but it would likely be four to six months before she could return to work, handing her costar his second aborted picture in a row.
By now Tracy was resigned to making movies as a livelihood, stuck needing a salary only Hollywood